Technology Transfer Valley of Death: 2D Bridge & Cash-Flow Model

Funding Controls

Government grant rate $120k/mo

VC entry TRL threshold TRL 6

VC funding rate $600k/mo

Cost escalation per TRL ×1.55

Simulation speed 1.0×

Live Readouts

Funded — climbing TRLs

Technology Readiness Level

1.0 / 9

Elapsed time

0.0 mo

Cash reserve

$0k

Net cash flow

$0k/mo

How it works

The "Valley of Death" is the well-documented funding gap in technology transfer: government grants comfortably cover early lab research (TRL 1-4), and once a technology is de-risked enough investors or corporate licensees step back in (TRL ≥ threshold) — but the mid-stage prototyping and pilot work in between is expensive and attracts almost no funding.

Each TRL step costs more to clear than the last, because prototypes get bigger and pilot runs need real equipment:

Burn(TRL)   = B0 · k^(TRL − 1)          k = cost-escalation slider
Funding(TRL)= Gov   if TRL ≤ 4
              VC    if TRL ≥ vcThreshold
              0     otherwise (the valley)
dReserve/dt = Funding(TRL) − Burn(TRL)
dTRL/dt     = rate0 · clamp(Funding / Burn, 0, 1)   only while Reserve ≥ 0

Government grant rate — non-dilutive funding available only up to TRL 4 (basic research through lab validation).
VC entry TRL threshold — the readiness level at which private capital or a corporate licensing deal starts flowing; raising it widens the valley.
VC funding rate — how much capital arrives once that threshold is crossed.
Cost escalation — how much more expensive each successive TRL step is than the last; steeper escalation makes the valley deadlier.
Simulation speed — how many simulated months pass per real second (2D-only control; the underlying equations are unchanged).

If the cash reserve goes negative while inside the valley, TRL progress halts and the technology falls into the canyon on the bridge view below — a stalled, unfunded invention, which is exactly what happens to most university IP that never reaches a licensing deal. Drag the bridge view to pan and scroll/pinch to zoom; the lower strip chart plots TRL, reserve and net cash flow against elapsed time so you can see the whole run's history at once.

Government-funded zone Valley of Death VC / licensing zone

drag to pan · scroll/pinch to zoom

TRL Reserve Net flow